Prof Ken Julien, in his re­cent in­ter­view, made two very im­por­tant state­ments. The first was that the he ob­served in Ghana-which he de­scribed as the new fron­tier for en­er­gy ex­plo­ration, lush with nat­ur­al gas and op­por­tu­ni­ty-that there is talk of adopt­ing the "Trinidad mod­el" for the de­vel­op­ment of its nat­ur­al gas in­dus­try. The oth­er re­ferred to what he says prime min­is­ter Er­ic Williams would have claimed: the biggest achieve­ment in the cre­ation of a na­tion­al en­er­gy sec­tor is not the plants at Pt Lisas or Pointe-a-Pierre or Pt Fortin. It is the recog­ni­tion that the peo­ple who are the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers and se­nior man­agers of the en­er­gy sec­tor, prod­ucts of the petro dol­lar, in­clude and he gave a list of names of such peo­ple that worked in and de­vel­oped the en­er­gy sec­tor. Julien said that he has tremen­dous re­spect for the peo­ple who are there and these places in Africa would beg to have peo­ple like these. They don't have them; they are now try­ing to build ca­pac­i­ty.

These two com­ments are in­ti­mate­ly re­lat­ed since these en­er­gy sec­tor peo­ple are the ones who are the prod­uct of the so-called Trinidad mod­el, and not the oth­er way around. Hence, it is in­cum­bent up­on us to de­fine this mod­el that we are hop­ing to ex­port to Africa. Though coun­tries de­vel­op in myr­i­ad ways, Prof Michael Porter, in his fa­mous book, The Com­pet­i­tive Ad­van­tage of Na­tions, talked about the stages of growth through which a coun­try may pass. These in­clude sim­ply tak­ing ad­van­tage of ba­sic fac­tors (for ex­am­ple, nat­ur­al re­sources, cheap labour, which at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment/rev­enues from more de­vel­oped coun­tries); the in­vest­ment stage in which a coun­try in­vests its own cap­i­tal in im­prov­ing its eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties via the im­por­ta­tion of tech­nol­o­gy; how to op­er­ate, main­tain and even­tu­al­ly how to mod­i­fy it.

Al­so, dur­ing this stage, the coun­try im­proves its lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing skills as it moves to the next stage-in­no­va­tion-in which it im­proves the knowl­edge gained and its use to cre­ate new knowl­edge, re­sult­ing in new and nov­el process­es, prod­ucts and ser­vices. To­day, this is the stage that de­fines the more com­pet­i­tive na­tions, for ex­am­ple, South Ko­rea.

In T&T, much nat­ur­al gas was flared by the oil com­pa­nies as a prod­uct of no val­ue. Hence, the Pt Lisas mod­el was at the time in­no­v­a­tive in that the NGC/NEC would buy this gas off the oil com­pa­nies and re­sell to plants to pro­duce prod­ucts from this gas as feed­stock/fu­el. These plants had sub­stan­tial gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment, and main­ly take or pay in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing con­tracts. The en­er­gy sec­tor had en­tered the Porter in­vest­ment stage, though many of the plants were fund­ed by boom-time gov­ern­ment debt. Then came the bust and the IMF/World Bank in­duced a sell-off of the plants to for­eign in­vest­ment and the en­er­gy in­vest­ment-stage mor­phed in­to Stage II plan­ta­tion econ­o­my. In this stage, the sec­tor was dri­ven by for­eign in­vest­ment, for­eign tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing tak­en out of the hands of the lo­cal staff. In fact, as it de­vel­oped, this Trinidad Mod­el, phase II plan­ta­tion, em­ployed some four per cent of our work­force and their main task was to op­er­ate, main­tain and man­age the plant at the be­hest of the for­eign own­ers.

An­oth­er de­vel­op­ment was the build­ing of sup­port in­fra­struc­ture (for ex­am­ple, gas trans­mis­sion lines) by NGC. Ac­cord­ing to Julien, un­like oil, up to to­day, the gas pro­duc­ers ex­pect NGC/NEC to give them the as­sur­ance that there is some mar­ket for the gas. Hence, the Trinidad mod­el is a stag­nat­ed phase of growth in which can be briefly de­scribed as the ex­ploita­tion of a de­plet­ing fac­tor ad­van­tage by main­ly for­eign in­vest­ment. The staff of which Julien is just­ly proud in this con­text nev­er ex­pand­ed in­to those that should have be­come the in­no­v­a­tive users and cre­ators of knowl­edge that could have evolved the in­dus­try.

Africa may wish to ini­ti­ate its de­vel­op­ment us­ing the Trinidad mod­el, that is, phase II plan­ta­tion, but must en­sure that it re­tains a ma­jor in­vest­ment in the in­dus­try and, in its re­search and de­vel­op­ment cen­tres, work close­ly with the in­dus­try to gar­ner, use and cre­ate knowl­edge (as hap­pened in Brazil) to take its in­dus­try un­to the next stage of growth.

Vic­tor Darceuil

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